Archer Mayor: The Dark Root

“Don’t know yet. I just got here.”

“Was it a bomb?”

I raised my eyebrows, feigning surprise at the very subject that had come up not two minutes earlier. “Whoa, Alice, this isn’t Detroit. We’re starting with the premise of a car accident. There is absolutely nothing to indicate a bomb at this point.”

She turned to face the still-crackling fire, her voice incredulous. “You saying that was a fender-bender?”

I shrugged and pointed to the fire chief standing by the largest of the trucks. “Ask him. He was here first. We’re just beginning our homework. I’ll let you know what we find out.”

She followed my advice, and Sol and I resumed our way, but I could already hear the clock ticking. Whatever this was, we already knew Alice was at least partially correct-this had been no simple accident, even if it hadn’t featured a bomb.

By now, the southbound traffic had been turned around and detoured back to the road we were headed for, which fed into Route 30 about a half mile north of the crash site. The upper road differs from its more-traveled neighbor in almost all respects. Tree-shaded, narrow, twisting, and hilly, it is the pastoral introvert to Route 30’s high-speed extrovert. Along most of its length, the road keeps far from the edge of the bluff overlooking Route 30, allowing for properties to be developed on both sides of it.

Not far below the northern intersection, however, geography dictates a single exception. Here, the river to the east and the hills to the west squeeze the two roads to within seventy-five feet of one another, and they become separated only by a narrow grassy shoulder, a ragged row of trees, and fifty feet of altitude. At this confluence, we found two fresh, clear furrows of a car’s wheels slashing diagonally across the threadbare grass to the edge of the drop-off. No guardrail had ever been planted here, either because of a shortage of funds or the lack of any apparent need.

“Damn,” Stennis murmured as we slowly rolled by and parked in the short driveway of a house several hundred feet farther on.

Due to the roadblock below, traffic was unusually heavy, which didn’t help me in collecting additional evidence. I risked becoming road kill several times to check the asphalt for telltale signs. Stennis nervously accompanied me, occasionally waving at passing cars in an ineffectual effort to slow them down. We continued in this fashion for over a half mile, while I slowly filled my pocket with odd pieces of vehicular scrap, most of it plastic.

Stennis was visibly relieved when I finally moved to the shoulder for the walk back. “What’ve we got?”

I pointed at a couple of angry, fresh skid marks in the middle of the road, as yet unaffected by the passing stream of cars. “Those come in a series almost-at regular intervals-and they’re from two cars, like they might’ve been punching it out at high speed. At the best, it means some high jinks run amok, but in any case it’s a homicide.”

Sol picked up on my growing sense of dread. “Alice’ll love that.”

“Let’s hope she doesn’t find out right away.”

He stared at me, slightly startled. “It won’t take her long after we cordon this area off.” He pointed ahead to where the car had left the road.

“I want to use a low-profile approach, at least for starters. There’s not much here anyhow. You take the necessary pictures and measurements now, and I’ll have J.P. do the rest later. I’ll order a canvass of everyone on the street-find out if they saw or heard anything. And maybe we can plant some innocuous citizen-complaint story in the paper about along here-it might stimulate a witness who saw something when they were driving through. It’s hard to believe two cars could have duked it out in broad daylight without somebody noticing it.”

“Why not just tell the paper what we found? Alice’ll probably put two and two together anyhow and get pissed off that we played cute,” Sol said.

“Could be, but right now you and I are the only ones who know how that car ended up down there-except for whoever helped launch it. That could be an advantage. And if nothing else, it’ll spare us fending off a lot of questions we can’t answer yet.”

“What about the canvass? That’s not too subtle,” he persisted.

“We can still use the hot-rodder ploy-tell people we’re trying to corroborate the complaint.” I patted my pocket. “In the meantime, I’ll give this stuff to J.P. See if he can’t match it to some make and model. And I’ll have a statewide be-on-the-lookout issued for any cars with fresh front-end damage. The local body shops can be checked out, too.”

I stopped suddenly. “Did you notice anyone unusual or out of place down below, watching the fire-maybe making sure their handiwork was terminal?”

He mulled it over for a few seconds. “There were some kids.”

I began to shake my head, but he interrupted me. “No. I mean kids from Brattleboro, not this neighborhood. Sally Javits and the Beaupré brothers. They must’ve heard about this pretty quick to get all the way out here this fast.”

“Who do we have down below?” I asked, pointing toward the lip of the tree-shrouded cliff.

“I heard Smith checking in.”

“Have him find out if Javits and the Beauprés are still there.”

Stennis keyed the radio mike he had clipped to the epaulette of his uniform jacket and relayed the inquiry. Several minutes later, I heard Smith report back empty-handed. Stennis just raised his eyebrows at me.

We’d reached the edge of the torn-up strip of grass. “Find them. But again, make it discreet. I don’t want them knowing we’re looking for them, and I don’t want anyone else thinking they’re snitches.”

I left Stennis by the side of the road and walked alongside the deep furrows in the earth.

The ruts showed the wild tearing of a car out of control, fighting momentum and energy in a desperate effort to avoid the plunge ahead. But the end had been inevitable. Examining the damaged tree from close up, I saw that the car had already been airborne at the time of impact, launched into space by an inconspicuous shelf of rock some six feet shy of the edge. The car had obviously taken off into the void with such speed, the tree must have been the only reason it hadn’t flown clear to the river.

I stepped as close to the cliff ’s rim as I dared, but aside from the smell of burning rubber and the column of smoke curling up from below, I could see nothing of what had brought us here. In less than a month, I thought, even the scant signs we’d found of a person’s final moments of panic would be dulled by time, weather, and the onslaught of spring growth.

I hoped our case wouldn’t suffer a similar fate.

Over the next day and a half, J.P. Tyler, our department’s forensics specialist, could do little with the debris I’d collected from the Upper Dummerston Road, nor did he read much more from the skid marks than I had. He confirmed my hypothesis, however, that there’d been two cars, traveling at up to a hundred miles an hour, and that one had butted the other from behind.

The canvass didn’t add much more. The two cars had been heard by some, seen by a few more, and been variously described as black, green, blue, brown, and “dark”; as hatchbacks, sports cars, sedans, coupes, and one “cabriolet”; and as having been occupied by anywhere from one person to four, none of whom had been identified. One of the witnesses said he’d heard shots. The newspaper story the next day about mysterious hot-rodders didn’t produce a single phone call.

The wreck, as expected, yielded a bit more. A 1986 Dodge Duster, registered to Alfred John Hutchins-address Brattleboro-it had been stolen twenty-four hours earlier. The plates had been crudely altered, with a 3 changed to an 8, and a C to an O, and the car had been newly repainted, although not by Mr. Hutchins. These few details were presented by Tyler with morose apologies. Of our five-member detective squad, Tyler was only perfunctorily interested in day-to-day police work. Forensics was his joy, and he always felt doubly let down when he hit a blank wall-by his own dearth of training and equipment, and by the limitations of the science in which he placed such faith.